Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

that I should first estabHsh its permanency by means of compared perceptions, which indeed would hardly be possible in this way, at least with that completeness which is required by the magnitude and strict universality of the concept. That the first subject of the causality of all arising and perishing cannot itself (in the field of phenomena) arise and perish, is a safe conclusion, pointing in [p. 206] the end to empirical necessity and permanency in existence, that is, the concept of a substance as a phenomenon.

If anything happens, the mere fact of something arising, without any reference to what it is, is in itself a matter for enquiry. The transition from the not-being of a state into that state, even though it contained no quality whatever as a phenomenon, must itself be investigated. This arising, as we have shown in No. A, does not concern the substance (because a substance never arises), but its state only. It is therefore mere change, and not an arising out of nothing. When such an arising is looked upon as the effect of a foreign cause, it is called creation. This can never be admitted as an event among phenomena, because its very possibility would destroy the unity of experience. If, however, we consider all things, not as phenomena, but as things by themselves and objects of the understanding only, then, though they are substances, they may be considered as dependent in their existence on a foreign cause. Our words would then assume quite a different meaning, and no longer be applicable to phenomena, as possible objects of experience.

How anything can be changed at all, how it is possible that one state in a given time is followed by an- [p. 207] other at another time, of that we have not the slightest conception a priori. We want for that a knowledge of

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real powers, which can be given empirically only : for instance, a knowledge of motive powers, or what is the same, a knowledge of certain successive phenomena (as movements) which indicate the presence of such forces. What can be considered a priori^ according to the law of causality and the conditions of time, are the form of every change, the condition under which alone, as an arising of another state, it can take place (its contents, that is, the state, which is changed, being what it may), and therefore the succession itself of the states (that which has happened).^

When a substance passes from one state a into another b, the moment of the latter is different from the moment of the former state, and follows it. Again, that second state, as a reality (in phenomena), differs from the first in which that reality did not exist, as b from zero ; that is, even if the state b differed from the state a in quantity only, that change is an arising of b — a, which in the former state was non-existent, and in relation to [p. 208] which that state is = o.

The question therefore arises how a thing can pass from a state =ato another =b? Between two moments there is always a certain time, and between two states in these two moments there is always a difference which must have a certain quantity, because all parts of phenomena are always themselves quantities. Every transition therefore from one state into another takes place in a certain time between two moments, the first of which determines

^ It should be remarked that I am not speaking here of the change of certain relations, but of the change of a state. Therefore when a body moves in a uniform way, it does not change its state of movement, but it does so when its motion increases or decreases.

1/0 Transcendental Analytic the state from which a thing arises, the second that at which it arrives. Both therefore are the temporal limits of a change or of an intermediate state between two states, and belong as such to the whole of the change. Every change, however, has a cause which proves its causality during the whole of the time in which the change takes place. The cause therefore does not produce the change suddenly (in one moment), but during a certain time ; so that, as the time grows from the initiatory moment a to its completion in /;, the quantity of reality also ib — a) is produced through all the smaller degrees between the first and the last. All change therefore is possible only through a continuous action of causality which, so far as it is uniform, is called a mo- [p. 209] mentum. A change does not consist of such momenta, but is produced by them as their effect.

This is the law of continuity in all change, founded on this, that neither time nor a phenomenon in time consists of parts which are the smallest possible, and that nevertheless the state of a thing which is being changed passes through all these parts, as elements, to its new state. No difference of the real in phenomena and no difference in the quantity of times is ever the smallest ; and thus the new state of reality grows from the first state in which that reality did not exist through all the infinite degrees thereof, the differences of which from one another are smaller than that between zero and a.

It does not concern us at present of what utility this principle may be in physical science. But how such a principle, which seems to enlarge our knowledge of nature so much, can be possible a priori, that requires a careful investigation, although we can see that it is real and true,